Exhibitions | Bernd & Hilla Becher | Fraenkel Gallery San Francisco Photography Gallery Wed, 04 Sep 2024 20:04:58 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.1 56972082 Paris Photo https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/paris-photo-2023 Wed, 11 Oct 2023 22:30:22 +0000 https://fraenkelgallery.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=81902 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to return to Paris Photo with works by Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Kota Ezawa, Peter Hujar, Wardell Milan, Richard Misrach, Eadweard Muybridge, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Carleton Watkins, Carrie Mae Weems, and others. In Carrie Mae Weems’s The North Star, 2022, the artist explores a painful family story in […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to return to Paris Photo with works by Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Kota Ezawa, Peter Hujar, Wardell Milan, Richard Misrach, Eadweard Muybridge, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Carleton Watkins, Carrie Mae Weems, and others.

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Image of an installed artwork of seven oval framed photographs of the night sky, with the North Star in the center of each photograph.
Carrie Mae Weems, The North Star, 2022
seven archival pigment prints framed with convex glass, 116-1/2 x 37 inches (overall installed) [295.9 x 93.9 cm]

In Carrie Mae Weems’s The North Star, 2022, the artist explores a painful family story in which her grandfather, Frank Weems, a tenant farmer and union activist, disappeared after being attacked by a white mob in Earle, Arkansas, in 1936. Though he was presumed dead, he narrowly escaped and made his way to Chicago on foot by following the North Star, but was never able to reunite with his family. The work makes an apt metaphor for Frank Weems’s life and the longer history of the bright star, Polaris, which helped guide those escaping slavery. Extended across a long, horizontal plane, the photographs make up an alternative starry night sky, while highlighting the central image, around which the others extend like the branches of a family tree. 

A framed photograph depicting a blurry black and white image of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Eiffel Tower, 1998
gelatin silver print, 71-3/4 x 60 inches (framed) [182.2 x 152.4 cm], edition of 5

The Eiffel Tower remains an iconic element of Parisian architecture, visible even from within the walls of the Grand Palais Éphémère, where this year’s Paris Photo again takes place. In Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographic reinterpretation, the artist pictures the 1889 monument slightly out of focus and isolated from its urban context. Thus, the details of the iron framework fall away, leaving only the contours of its recognizable shape. The photograph becomes a testament to the timelessness of the tower and the ongoing aims of science, industry, and innovation. 

Color photograph of impressions made on print with warm toned brush strokes framed in dark wood frame
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Brush Impression 0859 (Fire), 2023
gelatin silver print, 48-3/8 x 41 inches (framed) [122.9 x 104.1 cm], unique

In Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Brush Impression, the artist draws upon his study of Japanese calligraphy to record the movement of his brush across the surface of the paper, producing gestural shapes as well as splashes, bubbles, and traces of bristles. Rather than using ink, however, Sugimoto paints with darkroom chemicals on gelatin silver paper to produce striking black and white compositions. Here, the fluidity of the brushstrokes mirrors the kanji character for the elemental expression of water.

An 1880 photograph of a Siamese theater troupe pictures the stage from across the room, widening its view to encompass also the audience at far left. The slightly long exposure captures the movements of the central figures, along with their delicate gestures of touch, like a foot resting on another’s knee, and a hand pressing against a back.
Photographer Unknown, The Siamese Theatre, ca. 1880
albumen print, 12-3/8 x 15-1/4 inches (mount) [31.4 x 38.7 cm]

An 1880 photograph of a Siamese theater troupe pictures the stage from across the room, widening its view to encompass also the audience at far left. The slightly long exposure captures the movements of the central figures, along with their delicate gestures of touch, like a foot resting on another’s knee, and a hand pressing against a back.

Color image of mixed media artwork depicting a singular figure with multiple faces and one arm in grey frame
Wardell Milan, The Engineer, 2022
graphite, oil paste, cut-and-pasted paper on yupo paper, 11-5/8 x 9-3/8 inches (framed) [29.53 x 23.8 cm]

Wardell Milan’s character study, The Engineer, combines collaged photographs, colored pencil, graphite, and paint to construct an “exquisite corpse” of multiple body parts and their shifting perspectival views. A bit of an engineer himself, the artist playfully combines the pieces of his multi-media works to explore the duality between marginalization and the freedom of expression.

Black and white photograph of a man smoking a cigar while lying down
Peter Hujar, Chuck Gretsch (with Cigar), 1981
gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]

To compose this photograph of friend Chuck Gretsch, Peter Hujar stooped to his level, positioning his camera intimately close to the supine figure. Imbuing his photographs with the intimacy that so often determined his relationships with subjects, Hujar pairs the introspective gaze of his sitter with a column of curling smoke, rising ever so lightly from the cigar gripped between his lips.

Black and white photograph of a building lobby with an image of Jesus Christ set into the marble wall
Diane Arbus, Christ in a lobby, N.Y.C. 1964
gelatin silver print / printed by Neil Selkirk, 10-7/8 x 10 inches (sheet) [27.6 x 25.4 cm], edition of 75

This curious photograph of an illuminated portrait of Christ in a New York lobby exhibits the kind of strange dualities that interested Diane Arbus throughout her career. The reflection of the portrait in the marbled surface of the adjoining wall not only duplicates the image in reverse, but projects a ghostly likeness of the holy figure, like the stained record that is the Veil of Veronica.

Sepia toned photograph with a grid of 44 panels showing a nude man walking on an incline. 12 panels show ascending motion; 12 show ascending motion carrying a dumbbell; 12 show descending motion; 12 show descending motion with a dumbbell.
Eadweard Muybridge, A: Ascending incline. B: Ascending incline with a 50-lb. dumbbell. C: Descending incline. D: Descending incline with a 50-lb. dumbbell, 1887
collotype, 19 x 24 inches (sheet) [48.3 x 61 cm]

From 1884 to 1887, Eadweard Muybridge amassed an impressive compendium of photographic studies on human and animal locomotion. Developed as tools for artists and scientists, Muybridge’s photographs documented anonymous figures, clothed or naked, in a variety of movements. Though the title does not suggest it, the figure pictured is Muybridge himself.

Sepia toned photograph of a waterfall centered amongst trees and rocks with lake in foreground framed in walnut
Carleton E. Watkins, Nevada Fall, 700 ft., Yosemite, 1861
mammoth-plate albumen print, 32 x 36-1/2 inches (framed) [82 x 93 cm]

From Carleton Watkins’s first Yosemite trip in 1861, this mammoth-plate photograph frames Nevada Falls within a long-exposure look at the Merced River below. This work is signed on the recto by the artist himself and was exhibited in the pivotal Watkins retrospective which took place at the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It is being offered for the first time.

Black and white photograph of dramatically lit gnarled trees with rock edifices in the background.
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Pinon Juniper Forest, 2012
gelatin silver print, 60 x 80-1/2 inches (framed) [152.4 x 204.5 cm], edition of 5

The dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History—which transport viewers to far-flung corners of the globe at various moments in history—have long fascinated Hiroshi Sugimoto. During a 2012 visit to the museum, the artist positioned his camera at a particular vantage point before the artificial scene from where the viewer’s illusion of total immersion within the landscape could be achieved.

Color photograph of a submerged gas station in large body of water with mountain range on the horizon
Richard Misrach, Submerged Gas Pumps, Salton Sea, 1983
pigment print, 60-3/4 x 75-3/4 inches (framed) [154.3 x 192.4 cm], edition of 10

The third chapter of Richard Misrach’s series, Desert Cantos, “The Flood,” focuses on the Salton Sea of Southern California, a lake created by an engineering mistake at the beginning of the twentieth century. A popular tourist destination throughout the 1950s and 60s, excessive irrigation flooded the area further, leaving infrastructure like these gas pumps eerily submerged and the water at risk of contamination. The fraught history of the desert landscape, and its political turmoil, remains subtly coded within Misrach’s picturesque depiction.

Black and white photograph of a parking lot with several parked cars and a couple of neon signs
Robert Adams, Shopping center. Wheat Ridge, Colorado, 1968-71
gelatin silver print, 13 x 11 inches (mount) [33.0 x 27.9 cm]

Apart from the expansive views of Colorado’s Front Range, Robert Adams’s photographic studies of the mid-century suburban expansion outside of Denver captured more intimate scenes of everyday life, like this parking lot outside the local grocery store. A line of cars obfuscates the natural horizon beyond, yet a resilient tree rises into frame alongside the shop signs reflecting America’s car-centric culture.

Black and white photograph of head and shoulder portraits of young soldiers in dress uniform.
Harry Dutchyshyn, MPRTC 8801-1 TSU, Camp Gordon, Georgia, Company C, 1953
gelatin silver print, 19-3/4 x 12 inches (sheet) [50.2 x 30.5 cm]

American military photographer Harry Dutchyshyn emigrated in 1926 from Austria to the U.S., where he worked as the post photographer at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey before transferring to Camp Gordon in Georgia after the Second World War. Dutchyshyn’s 1953 portrait of the 229 soldiers of the camp’s Company C was taken weeks after the end of the Korean War, and just five years after President Harry Truman’s executive order desegregating the United States Military. The changing racial makeup of the armed services in the aftermath of an intense period of global conflict is reflected in the class portrait, which includes the last names and hometowns of the individuals pictured.

Black and white photograph of a grain elevator
Bernd & Hilla Becher, Grain Elevator [Getreideheber], Buffalo, New York, U.S.A., 1982
gelatin silver print, 20-5/8 x 24 inches (sheet) [52.4 x 61 cm], edition of 5

Grain elevators, which afforded agricultural production the privilege of industrial scale, were a longtime subject for Bernd and Hilla Becher. Approaching this example near Buffalo, New York, the husband and wife duo photographed their subject according to the “impersonal” and “uninflected” style consistent throughout their career. Yet the lettering adorning its surface, as well as the line of railroad tracks and surrounding buildings, imbue the site with a sense for its unique character.

A darkly framed abstract image of overlapping geometric shapes
Kota Ezawa, Photogram, 2023
transparency in lightbox, 28-3/4 x 20-3/4 inches (overall) [73 x 52.7 cm], edition of 5

When Dadaist and Surrealist Man Ray began his renowned series of photograms (i.e., Rayographs) shortly after his arrival in Paris in 1921, he layered atop photosensitive paper everyday objects such as thumbtacks, coils, combs, and more. Here, Kota Ezawa’s reinterpretation further symbolizes the rudimentary forms that have become canonical in the history of photography. Installed as a lightbox, Ezawa’s “remix” re-animates the dreamlike image hovering somewhere between abstraction and representation.

Black and white photograph of a figure in black looking at a pyramid within a city from the crosswalk framed in black
Carrie Mae Weems, Pyramids of Rome – Ancient Rome, 2006
digital chromogenic print, 73-1/2 x 61-1/2 inches (framed) [186.7 x 156.2 cm], edition of 5

In the 2006 series of self-portraits, Carrie Mae Weems situates herself within monumental landscapes and sweeping vistas in and around Rome. Dressed in a long black dress with her back turned toward the camera, Weems confronts iconic architectural sites dotting the city and, in turn, the structures of power they symbolize. As Weems states, “You are always aware that you are sort of a minion in relationship to this enormous edifice—the edifice of power.”

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]]> 81902 Bernd & Hilla Becher https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/explore-bernd-hilla-becher Wed, 30 Nov 2022 22:50:37 +0000 https://fraenkelgallery.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=78644 Bernd and Hilla Becher’s fifth exhibition with Fraenkel Gallery spans the artists’ career and traces the evolution of the presentation of their work, from single images and grids to groups of larger framed images. Among the highlights are typologies, industrial landscapes, and iconic water towers. The Bechers began their photographic collaborations in 1959, shortly after […]

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]]> Bernd and Hilla Becher’s fifth exhibition with Fraenkel Gallery spans the artists’ career and traces the evolution of the presentation of their work, from single images and grids to groups of larger framed images. Among the highlights are typologies, industrial landscapes, and iconic water towers.

The Bechers began their photographic collaborations in 1959, shortly after meeting at an advertising agency while students at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. The couple first focused their attention on the evolving industrial landscape of Germany’s Ruhr Valley, as seen in the colliery and surrounding town above. While most often regarded for their studies of individual structures, such wider, narrative views of industrial sites allow for a more social and historical contextualization of their subjects. From the Ruhr Valley, their artistic explorations soon carried them across Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain, and the United States. 

Group of six black and white photographs of various water towers
Water Towers [Wassertürme] 1963-1972, 2010
six gelatin silver prints, 37 x 68-1/2 inches (overall installed) [94 x 174 cm]

A 2010 typology brings together six photographs of double water towers, recorded between 1963 and 1972. Among the criteria the Bechers used to select their subjects was that the form of the structure must relate to its function. Although their designs vary widely, water towers serve a most basic function, storing water and controlling its pressure.

Black and white photograph of the exterior of a lime kiln
Lime Kiln [Kalköfen], Ten Boer, NL, 1968
gelatin silver print, 11-3/4 x 15-7/8 inches (image & sheet) [29.6 x 40.3 cm]

While much of the Bechers’ work focused on twentieth-century industrial processes, they also recorded older manufacturing traditions, such as the lime kilns used to turn limestone into quicklime. Compelled by the desire to document industrial technologies in decline, the artists relied upon their large-format film camera—a photographic practice they themselves perceived to be increasingly obsolete. The Bechers’ oeuvre attests to a deep reverence for industries past, despite their seeming demise.

Four black and white photographs of blast furnaces from varying angles
Blast Furnaces, Völklingen, Saar District, 1986
four gelatin silver prints, 36 x 123 inches (overall installed) [91.4 x 312.4 cm]

These four large-format studies of blast furnaces in Germany compare the subtle differences between strangely anthropomorphic forms. Iron production took place for more than 100 years at the site in Völklingen, ending the same year the Bechers photographed there. The blast furnaces are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Black and white photograph of a blast furnace
Blast Furnace, Rombas, Lorraine, France, 1984
gelatin silver print, 24 x 19-1/2 inches (image & sheet), edition of 5
Black and white photograph of a blast furnace
Blast Furnace, Rombas, Lorraine, France, 1984
gelatin silver print, 24 x 19-1/2 inches (image & sheet) [60.9 x 49 cm], edition of 5
Black and white photograph of a water tower exterior
Water Tower, Herve/Liège, Belgium, 1971
gelatin silver print, 36-1/2 x 29-1/4 inches (framed) [92.71 x 74.29 cm], edition of 5


One gallery in the exhibition features fifteen Water Towers, dating from 1967 to 1984, echoing the installation of the artists’ seminal exhibition at the Dia Art Foundation in 1989. There, rather than presenting the images in grid form, the artists displayed the works around the room, in a sense expanding the typologies to encompass the whole space.

Black and white photograph of a grain elevator
Grain Elevator [Getreideheber], Buffalo, New York, U.S.A., 1982
gelatin silver print, 20-5/8 x 24 inches (sheet) [52.4 x 61 cm], edition of 5

Grain elevators, which brought the scale of industrial production to an agricultural product, were a longtime subject for the Bechers. As these examples show, a consistency of form across the United States and France rendered the grain elevator a universal and immediately recognizable subject.

The Bechers’ approach to these structures, however “impersonal” or “uninflected” (as some critics have argued), has resulted in a style as consistent and identifiable as their subjects.

Black and white photograph of grain elevator exterior
Grain Elevator, Coolus, Châlons-en-Champagne, France, 2006
gelatin silver print, 20 x 24-1/2 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 62.2 cm], edition of 5
Black and white photograph of grain elevator exterior
Grain Elevator, Oeuilly, Reims, France, 2006
gelatin silver print, 20 x 24-1/2 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 62.2 cm], edition of 5
Black and white photograph of the exterior of a grain elevator
Grain Elevator, Ally-Sur-Somme/Amiens, France, 2000
gelatin silver print, 20 x 24-1/2 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 62.2 cm], edition of 5
Black and white photograph of the exterior of a grain elevator
Grain Elevator, Bertreville/Dieppe, F, 2006
gelatin silver print, 20 x 24-1/2 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 62.2 cm], edition of 5
Black and white photograph of a cemetery with blast furnace on the horizon
Blast Furnace Plant, Bethlehem, PA, USA, 1986
gelatin silver print, 20-3/4 x 24-1/4 inches (sheet) [52.7 x 61.6 cm], edition of 5

What has become affectionately known as the “Becher School” or the “Düsseldorf School of Photography” refers not only to the Bechers’ recognizable style, but also to their lasting impact on photography and contemporary art. The rigorous documentary methods of German artists Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, and Thomas Ruff, for example, stem from the Bechers’ mentorship and teaching.

The Bechers’ legacy has also inspired generations of American artists, many of whom have returned to those same sites from the German artists’ North American travels. In 1986, the Bechers photographed the hillside and steel mill in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The picture serves as a bridge, linked to both Walker Evans’s photograph from the same spot, A Graveyard and Steel Mill in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1935, in which a stone cross dominates the view, and Alec Soth’s Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 2019, where a minivan interrupts the landscape.

Black and white photograph of large concrete cross within cemetery with steel mill on the horizon
Walker Evans, A Graveyard and Steel Mill in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, November, 1935
© 2022 Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Color image of minivan in cemetery with furnace plant in background
Alec Soth, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 2019
pigment print, 32 x 40 inches (image) [81.3 x 101.6 cm], edition of 9

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]]> 78644 Bernd & Hilla Becher https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/bernd-and-hilla-becher-2023 Fri, 21 Oct 2022 23:17:42 +0000 https://fraenkelgallery.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=78316 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of photographs by celebrated German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher, their fifth with the gallery. Spanning the Bechers’ career, the exhibition features approximately 35 works made between 1967 and 2010, including examples of their pioneering typologies, a selection of early industrial landscapes, and a collection of iconic […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of photographs by celebrated German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher, their fifth with the gallery. Spanning the Bechers’ career, the exhibition features approximately 35 works made between 1967 and 2010, including examples of their pioneering typologies, a selection of early industrial landscapes, and a collection of iconic water towers. The exhibition coincides with a major retrospective of the Bechers’ work organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from December 17, 2022, until April 2, 2023.

Explore the Exhibition
Color image of four black and white photographs depicting various girds of towers
Cooling Towers; Blast Furnaces; Water Towers; Winding Towers [Kühltürme; Hochöfen; Wassertürme; Fördertürme], 1973-1986
four typologies, each comprised of nine gelatin silver prints, 34-3/8 x 108-1/2 inches (overall installed) [87.3 x 275.6 cm]

The Bechers’ carefully composed black and white photographs depict grain elevators, cooling towers, lime kilns, blast furnaces, and winding towers—examples of large-scale industrial architecture that the artists recognized as being in decline and likely soon gone forever. Using a precisely positioned large format view camera and working on overcast days, the Bechers created photographs with the uniform, neutral appearance of architectural renderings or scientific records, transforming their subjects into what they called “anonymous sculpture.”

Black and white photograph of a town strip with industrial plant on the horizon
Industrial Landscapes: Blast Furnace Plant, Duisburg-Bruckhausen, Germany (from outside), 1999
gelatin silver print, 20 x 24-1/2 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 62.2 cm]

The photographs on view—all made during the artists’ lifetime—trace the evolution of the Bechers’ visual approach, from single images and grids combining small prints to their later style, which brought together “typologies” of larger framed images. The exhibition includes a gallery focused on 20 x 24-inch prints of water towers from the U.S., Germany, France, and Belgium. The format was first employed by the Bechers in their seminal 1989 exhibition at the Dia Art Foundation in New York, and showcases the diverse forms of these structures. Elsewhere, water towers are featured in one of the artists’ signature typologies, bringing together six photographs of double-tower forms recorded between 1963 and 1972. Also on view are industrial landscapes that depict the surroundings of factories and plants in the U.S. and Germany, including a panoramic view of the steel mill in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, taken from a perspective made famous by Walker Evans in 1935.

Grid of six framed black and white photographs of blast furnaces
Blast Furnaces, Perspective View, 1979-86
six gelatin silver prints, 22-1/4 x 18 inches (each framed) [56.5 x 45.7 cm]

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]]> 78316 Paris Photo https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/explore-paris-photo-2022 Thu, 06 Oct 2022 18:01:42 +0000 https://fraenkelgallery.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=78110 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to return to Paris Photo with works by Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Lee Friedlander, Peter Hujar, Richard Learoyd, Christian Marclay, Wardell Milan, Richard Misrach, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Carrie Mae Weems, Garry Winogrand and others. Christopher Ethelbert Cheyne operated a photographic studio in Hampton, Virginia, starting in 1894. His subjects included local businesses and family portraits, and in 1909, he photographed the […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to return to Paris Photo with works by Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Lee Friedlander, Peter Hujar, Richard Learoyd, Christian Marclay, Wardell Milan, Richard Misrach, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Carrie Mae Weems, Garry Winogrand and others.

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Detail of a color photograph of a graduating class
Hampton Institute Graduating Class, (detail)

Christopher Ethelbert Cheyne operated a photographic studio in Hampton, Virginia, starting in 1894. His subjects included local businesses and family portraits, and in 1909, he photographed the graduating men and women of the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), a historically Black university founded in 1868. The Hampton Institute was the subject of a book published by the Museum of Modern Art in 1966, featuring Frances Benjamin Johnston’s photographs of the school and its students, commissioned for the Paris Centennial Exposition of 1900.

Black and white photograph of a seated woman on a bed with handwriting reading 'Nora' beneath photograph
Diane Arbus, A Puerto Rican housewife, N.Y.C. 1963
gelatin silver print, titled and outlined by Diane Arbus in ink, 10 x 10-7/8 inches (sheet) [25.4 x 27.6 cm]

This print, made by Arbus between 1963 and 1965, includes a hand-drawn border with the name of the subject inscribed below. The image was included in the landmark exhibition New Documents, at the Museum of Modern Art in 1967.

Color photograph depicting a woman holding a gun in midair with explosion behind framed in black frame
Martine Gutierrez, Hit Movie Poster, 2022
chromogenic print, 43-1/2 x 73-1/4 inches (framed) [109.8 x 186.0 cm], edition of 5

“All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl,” according to the French New Wave film director Jean Luc Godard. Known for her complex critiques of popular culture and gender archetypes, the transdisciplinary artist Martine Gutierrez stages her own movie, assuming a diverse cast of femme fatales in Hit Movie. The photograph—a still from her video piece—alludes to the posters used to promote the 1990s action blockbuster films from which her heroines are drawn. Picturing herself as the Hollywood bombshells, she confronts the industry’s hyperfixation on feminine sexuality, revising Godard’s trope: “whether or not she is born with one, give a girl a gun and you’ve got a hit movie.”

Black and white photograph of silhouetted shadow on door with small sign listing business hours
Lee Friedlander, Mobile, Alabama, 1966
gelatin silver print, 7 x 11 inches (sheet) [17.8 x 27.9 cm]

In this self-portrait by Lee Friedlander, the artist’s shadow stands beneath a small sign noting the shop owner’s partial retirement—a sly image made early in Friedlander’s own career. Known for his playful layering of stylistic elements, Friedlander has often included his own shadow in photographs, inserting himself into the scene with mischievous humor.

A black and white photo of a tree
Robert Adams, South of Burns, Oregon, 1999
gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches (sheet) [35.6 x 27.9 cm]
Square wooden artwork with etchings and ink depicting a green form
Robert Adams, Untitled, 2020
ink on wood, 8-3/4 x 8-1/4 x 3/4 inches [22.2 x 20.9 x 1.9 cm]

In 2020, Robert Adams began making painted woodblocks—simplified compositions that draw on the stillness and grandeur he remembers from his time spent on the Colorado prairie. Modest in size and painted in springlike hues with block-printing ink, the wooden works sometimes echo forms found in his photographs. Robert Adams: The Plains, from Memory, collects these works in a catalogue published recently by Steidl.

Color photograph of cargo ship on the water during sunset framed in bleached wood
Richard Misrach, Cargo Ship (January 14, 2022 6:51 am), 2022
pigment print, 63 x 82-1/4 inches (framed) [160 x 208.9 cm], edition of 5

Richard Misrach recently documented cargo ships in the San Francisco Bay, during a critical moment for the global shipping industry. Made in the light of early morning or late afternoon, Misrach’s images suggest a comparison to J.M.W Turner’s atmospheric maritime paintings, and recall the careful observation of the sky and water in Misrach’s own “Golden Gate” series. 

Bernd & Hilla Becher, Cooling Towers [Kühltürme] 1968-1999, 2005
nine gelatin silver prints, 56-1/4 x 68-1/4 inches (installed) [142.9 x 173.4 cm]

Bernd and Hilla Becher’s ambitious nine-part typology pictures a series of cooling towers with an eye toward precision, clarity, and consistency. Seen from the front, each photograph depicts the facade of a tower, with large turbine fans peeking out from the base. With their rigorous photographic practice, the Bechers composed complex typologies allowing for comparative analyses of the shifting industrial landscapes of Western Europe and North America.

Such a project was only possible through the Bechers’ passion and technique. Writing about the recent exhibition of the artists’ work at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Blake Gopnik observes that “the preternatural level of detail on view, and its glorious range of grays and blacks, require negatives the size of a man’s hand, a tripod as big as a sapling, lens filters and an advanced darkroom technique.”

Black and white photograph of child in stroller with sunglasses
Garry Winogrand, Untitled, 1960
gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches (sheet) [35.6 x 27.9 cm]
Black and white photograph of a nude smirking child being held by women
Garry Winogrand, Greece, 1978
gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches (sheet) [35.6 x 27.9 cm]
Black-and-white photograph of Fran Lebowitz reclining on a couch.
Peter Hujar, Fran Lebowitz, 1975
gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]

Fran Lebowitz was a close friend of Peter Hujar’s, and talks about their relationship in an interview published in Hujar’s monograph Love & Lust. “He was an insider,” says Lebowitz. “What connects all his photographs is that every single person he photographed, every single person that he was interested in, each of his friends, was a misfit. Peter was a misfit.” 

Color image of mixed media work depicting two figures on sandy beach with swatches of blue, white, and yellow in grey frame
Wardell Milan, Two warriors looking for euphoria, 2018
charcoal, graphite, gesso, etching ink, cut-and-paste paper on ink jet print, 47-1/2 x 63-1/8 inches (framed) [120.7 x 160.3 cm]
Two warriors looking for euphoria, 2018 (detail)

Wardell Milan works in mixed media, combining elements of photography, drawing, painting, and collage. Themes of freedom and safety are often at the forefront of his works, especially as they apply to the marginalized body.

Black and white photographs of father and son on white background
Richard Avedon, Dick Hickock, murderer, Garden City, Kansas, April 15, 1960 and Walter Hickock, father of Dick Hickock, murderer, Garden City, Kansas, April 15, 1960
two gelatin silver prints, 20 x 16 inches (each sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm], edition of 13

Richard Avedon photographed Dick Hickock and his father Walter at the request of Truman Capote, who was gathering material for In Cold Blood, his groundbreaking non-fiction novel about the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959. 

From Avedon, the younger Hickock, “gets the soft-focus celebrity treatment, the line between notoriety and fame as blurred as ever,” Alexandra Schwartz writes in The New Yorker. “Hickock, according to Capote, had always been self-conscious about his long, lopsided face. His nose juts out at a Picasso angle, and while his right eye meets Avedon’s lens straight on, his smaller left one seems to look inward. The result is a double portrait, part persona, part awkward, vulnerable self.”

Framed color photograph of a skate wing suspended by black thread framed in white
Richard Learoyd, Skate wing, 2012
camera obscura Ilfochrome photograph, 46-7/8 x 46-7/8 inches (framed) [119.0 x 119.0 cm]

Richard Learoyd’s photographs have “a kind of fetishistic meaning,” writes Sandra S. Phillips in the catalogue for the artist’s survey at Fundación MAPFRE in 2019. “We relate to these pictures as expressions of art, to be sure, but there is something magical about them, too.”

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]]> 78110 Art Basel https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/art-basel-2022 Wed, 11 May 2022 23:53:38 +0000 https://fraenkelgallery.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=76782 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to return to Art Basel with work by Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Sophie Calle, Liz Deschenes, Adam Fuss, Martine Gutierrez, Peter Hujar, Richard Learoyd, Christian Marclay, Wardell Milan, Richard Misrach, Irving Penn, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Carrie Mae Weems and others. Robert Adams’s early, unpublished image of a Colorado commercial […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to return to Art Basel with work by Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Sophie Calle, Liz Deschenes, Adam Fuss, Martine Gutierrez, Peter Hujar, Richard Learoyd, Christian Marclay, Wardell Milan, Richard Misrach, Irving Penn, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Carrie Mae Weems and others.

A black and white photograph of an empty gas station with a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in the back ground.
Robert Adams, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1968-71
gelatin silver print, 13 x 11 inches (mount) [33 x 27.9 cm]
A photo of a black and white book with an image of a gas station on the cover

Robert Adams’s early, unpublished image of a Colorado commercial strip is from his seminal body of work, The New West, a photographic essay about our imprint on the landscape of the American West. Adams’s work is the subject of a current exhibition American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which explores the spiritual and environmental meanings of his work. The show is accompanied by a catalogue (available for purchase here).

Jeffrey Fraenkel on Bernd and Hilla Becher
Duration: 00:01:44 | Release Date: May 2022
Color image of four black and white photographs depicting various girds of towers
Bernd & Hilla Becher, Cooling Towers; Blast Furnaces; Water Towers; Winding Towers [Kühltürme; Hochöfen; Wassertürme; Fördertürme], 1973 – 1986
four typologies, each comprised of nine gelatin silver prints, 34-3/8 x 108-1/2 inches (overall) [87.3 x 275.6 cm]

A collection of typologies by Bernd & Hilla Becher, assembled by a close friend of the artists, brings together four types of structures, subverting the viewer’s expectation of what is being typologized: the structures or the prints.

An image of a tall, slender, mirrored sculpture standing in the corner of a beige room with two framed black and white works of art hanging in the background
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Mathematical Model 004: Dini’s surface: A Surface of Constant Negative Curvature Obtained by Twisting A Pseudosphere, 2006
aluminum, iron, 119 x 9 x 9 inches (overall) [302.3 x 22.9 x 22.9 cm]

Hiroshi Sugimoto works in metal to produce mathematical models, following the tradition of forms envisioned by mathematicians to give substance to geometric ideas. “I have attempted to transform mathematical equations into tangible objects,” he has written about the works, which are created using a computer and advanced machining tools to sculpt each form. 

Black and white photograph of tattooed women holding a small dog
Diane Arbus, Tattooed lady with dog, Philadelphia, Pa. 1964
gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches (sheet) [35.6 x 27.9 cm]

Diane Arbus signed and inscribed the verso of this print:

“Miss Betty Broadbent, tattooed lady with Goldie, Her dog. Phila. 1964.“

The image is included in the definitive monograph Diane Arbus: Revelations, to be reissued by Aperture in the fall of 2022.

Color image of boarded up store front with paint splotches covering graffiti in black frame
Carrie Mae Weems, Painting the Town #3, 2021
pigment print, 58-7/8 x 86-7/8 inches (framed) [149.9 x 221 cm]

Activism has been central to Carrie Mae Weems’s practice. In new, large-format photographs made in Portland, Oregon, Weems records the aftermath of the city’s 2020 protests for racial justice. In the series, boarded-up windows become a canvas, collecting traces of graffiti and the paint used to cover it.    

Frish Brandt discusses Carrie Mae Weems
Duration: 00:01:07 | Release Date: May 2022
Color photograph of deceased parrot positioned midair with black string framed in black
Richard Learoyd, Untitled [Two parrots], 2022
Ilfochrome photograph, 63-3/4 x 54-5/8 inches (framed) [161.8 x 138.8 cm]

Inspired in part by Paul Gauguin’s 1902 painting Still Life with Parrots, Richard Learoyd’s photograph captures the iridescent feathers and the talismanic form of the two birds. Learoyd describes the image as “a joyous celebration of the exotic mingled with the tragedy of mortality.”

Color image of mixed media work depicting two figures on sandy beach with swatches of blue, white, and yellow in grey frame
Wardell Milan, Two warriors looking for euphoria, 2018
charcoal, graphite, gesso, etching ink, cut-and-paste paper on ink jet print, 47-1/2 x 63-1/8 inches (framed) [120.7 x 160.3 cm]

Wardell Milan works in mixed media, combining elements of photography, drawing, painting, and collage. Themes of freedom of expression and safe spaces are often at the forefront of his works, especially as they apply to the marginalized body.

Black and white photograph of nude male
Peter Hujar, Keith Cameron (II), 1981
gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]

“Lightly bearded, with tousled hair falling over one eye, he looks like a Greenpoint hipster,” Vince Aletti has written about one of Peter Hujar’s portraits of Keith Cameron.

Color photograph with negative borders depicting train tracks receding into the horizon, framed in a black frame
Richard Misrach, Train Tracks, Colorado Desert, California, 1984 / printed 2022
pigment print, 63-1/2 x 82-7/8 inches (framed) [161.3 x 210.5 cm]
Frish Brandt on Richard Misrach
Duration: 00:01:26 | Release Date: May 2022
Framed print of a sky blue rectangle
Liz Deschenes, Blue Wool Scale #1, 2019
pigment print on aluminum, 34-1/4 x 24-1/4 inches (framed) [87 x 61.6 cm]

​​Since the early 1990s, Liz Deschenes​ has made the medium of photography the subject of her work, exploring the meaning inherent in its materials. This work​ is from a series that references the Blue Wool Scale, a standard developed by textile manufacturers to measure lightfastness, and widely used in art conservation.

Black and white photograph of two cigarette butts next to one another in white frame
Irving Penn, Cigarette No. 037, New York, 1972
platinum-palladium print mounted on aluminum, 32 x 26 inches (framed) [81.3 x 66 cm]

Writing in 1975 about Irving Penn’s platinum-palladium prints of cigarettes, John Szarkowski noted, “The capricious and frankly inconsequential nature of the nominal subject matter, in conjunction with its ambitious and enormously sophisticated handling, constitute a clear statement of intention: these photographs can be considered only as works of art.”

Daphne Palmer discusses Martine Gutierrez
Duration: 00:02:10 | Release Date: May 2022
Color photograph of women dressed in cultural garb against white background framed in white
Martine Gutierrez, Neo-Indeo, Monochrome Mamacita, p28 from Indigenous Woman, 2018
chromogenic print, 54-7/8 x 36-7/8 inches (framed) [139.4 x 93.7 cm]

Working across mediums, Martine Gutierrez acts as an idiosyncratic cultural producer, blurring the lines between art and advertisement. In Neo-Indeo, a fashion editorial in the self-produced magazine Indigenous Woman, Gutierrez wears Indigenous textiles, some of which belonged to her Mayan grandparents, in a personal, multicultural version of high fashion.

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]]> 76782 The Plot Thickens https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/plot-thickens Fri, 29 Aug 2014 04:44:08 +0000 https://fraenkelgallery.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=20559 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce The Plot Thickens, an exhibition and 250-page catalogue marking the gallery’s 35th anniversary. Comprised of 100 photographs acquired and assembled over the last five years, The Plot Thickens revels in the richness of the medium through works by its greatest masters interwoven with prints by the anonymous and unknown. The […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce The Plot Thickens, an exhibition and 250-page catalogue marking the gallery’s 35th anniversary. Comprised of 100 photographs acquired and assembled over the last five years, The Plot Thickens revels in the richness of the medium through works by its greatest masters interwoven with prints by the anonymous and unknown. The majority of images are being exhibited and published for the first time.

The Plot Thickens, Fraenkel Gallery, 2014

The earliest work in the exhibition is Charles Clifford’s moody study of the Alhambra, circa 1858; the most recent is Lee Friedlander’s bullet-riddled “NO SHOOTING” sign, made in June 2014. Photographic objects by Sol LeWitt, Jess, Christian Marclay, and Bernd & Hilla Becher find affinities with Charles Sheeler, Helen Levitt, Thomas Eakins, and William Eggleston. A found snapshot of an all-female wedding, dated 1930, appears near Nan Goldin’s 1978 self-portrait as a dominatrix and an 1860 daguerreotype of two girls holding an image of their deceased mother.

Photographer Unknown, [All-female wedding party], October 7, 1930

Eadweard Muybridge and Diane Arbus—two very different artists whose work contains seemingly inexhaustible achievements—are among the photographers who make repeat appearances throughout The Plot Thickens. Other artists included are: Mel Bochner, Katy Grannan, Alfred Stieglitz, Kota Ezawa, and Ralph Eugene Meatyard, the Louisville optician who left behind an unforgettable body of work at his death in 1972, at the age of 46.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Untitled, 1964

Fraenkel Gallery opened in San Francisco in September 1979 with an exhibition of recently discovered albumen prints by the nineteenth-century photographer Carleton Watkins. Since then, the gallery has presented more than 300 exhibitions exploring photography and its connections to the other arts, and published 55 books on subjects ranging from Edward Hopper’s influence on photography to the sculptor David Smith’s multi-decade involvement with photographs, as well as the complete library of Diane Arbus and nine monographs by Lee Friedlander.

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]]> 20559 They Knew What They Wanted, Curated by Katy Grannan https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/they-knew-what-they-wanted-4-artistscurators-4-galleries-curated-by-katy-grannan Tue, 01 May 2012 01:23:59 +0000 http://fraenkelgallery.badfeather.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=2754 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce They Knew What They Wanted, a collaborative exhibition in four locations. Over the past winter and spring, four artists were given free rein to explore the racks, print cabinets, and storage areas of four San Francisco galleries. From the same pool of works each artist has assembled an installation […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce They Knew What They Wanted, a collaborative exhibition in four locations. Over the past winter and spring, four artists were given free rein to explore the racks, print cabinets, and storage areas of four San Francisco galleries. From the same pool of works each artist has assembled an installation for one of these galleries: Katy Grannan for Fraenkel Gallery, Shannon Ebner for Altman Siegel Gallery, Jordan Kantor for Ratio 3, and Robert Bechtle for John Berggruen Gallery. Katy Grannan’s installation at Fraenkel Gallery will be on view from 1 July through 21 August 2010.

Lee Friedlander, N.Y.C., 2006
gelatin-silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet)

Katy Grannan’s own work in photography examines the desire of her subjects to offer themselves up to the camera lens. The exhibition she has assembled for Fraenkel Gallery includes the work of painters, sculptors, and photographers such as Robert Adams, Richard Avedon, Robert Bechtle, Diane Arbus, E.J. Bellocq, Jim Dine, Lee Friedlander, Peter Hujar, Jordan Kantor, Henri Matisse, Barry McGee, Nathan Oliveira, Richard Misrach, Linda Ridgway, William Wiley, Garry Winogrand, and several works by unknown photographers. Grannan lives in Berkeley, California.

Other artists whose work will be on view across the four galleries include Lutz Bacher, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Alighiero e Boetti, Miriam Bohm, Vija Celmins, Gregory Crewdson, Maureen Gallace, Charlie Harper, Matt Keegan, Los Carpinteros, Henry Wessel, Tom McKinley, Richard McLean, Manuel Neri, Trevor Plagen, Mitzi Pederson, Robert Rauschenberg, Will Rogan, Ed Ruscha, Iran Do Espirito Santo, Sara VanDerBeek, Garth Weiser, Rachel Whiteread, Steve Wolfe and many others.

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]]> 2754 FURTHERMORE 30th Anniversary Exhibition https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/furthermore-30th-anniversary-exhibition Tue, 01 May 2012 02:07:38 +0000 http://fraenkelgallery.badfeather.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=2753 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Furthermore, a special exhibition marking the gallery’s thirtieth anniversary. Comprised of nearly one hundred eye-opening works by artists as varied as Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Andy Warhol, Helen Levitt, Sol LeWitt, Robert Adams, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Dorothea Lange, and Photographer Unknown, Furthermore is a time-traveling survey that sweeps backward […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Furthermore, a special exhibition marking the gallery’s thirtieth anniversary. Comprised of nearly one hundred eye-opening works by artists as varied as Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Andy Warhol, Helen Levitt, Sol LeWitt, Robert Adams, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Dorothea Lange, and Photographer Unknown, Furthermore is a time-traveling survey that sweeps backward and forward through the history of the medium.

Jeu de Ballon, Embrun, 1890
albumen silver print, 6 5/8 x 4 3/4″

From the catalogue’s introduction by Jeffrey Fraenkel:

God, 1918
gelatin silver print, 9 1/2 x 7 5/8″

Among the most remarkable photographs to be included in Furthermore is Morton Schamberg’s 1918 Dada masterpiece, “God.” Believed to be the only print in existence, “God” is a study of a cast iron plumbing fixture mounted to a wooden base. Regarded as a sister piece to Marcel Duchamp’s infamous “Fountain” (a readymade of an upended urinal) from the same year, there is uncertainty about who first conceived of transforming plumbing into art. Schamberg died suddenly during the 1918 Philadelphia influenza epidemic, age 38.

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]]> 2753 A Survey 1972 – 2006 https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/bernd-hilla-becher-a-survey-1972-2006 Sat, 20 Jun 2009 06:21:00 +0000 http://fraenkelgallery.badfeather.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=2745 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce A Survey 1972-2006, a survey of the work of the influential German artists spanning the years 1972 to 2006. The exhibition will be on view from May 7 to July 3, 2009. Through approximately twenty works in various formats, the exhibition will present a concise array of the subjects […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce A Survey 1972-2006, a survey of the work of the influential German artists spanning the years 1972 to 2006. The exhibition will be on view from May 7 to July 3, 2009.

Cooling Towers, Ruhr District, 1983
typology consisting of nine gelatin-silver prints, 62 x 50 inches (approx. overall)

Through approximately twenty works in various formats, the exhibition will present a concise array of the subjects of primary importance to the Bechers over their long career. At the same time, the works on view will highlight the artists’ evolving modes of presentation, from their diptychs of the early 1970s, through ambitious multi-part typologies, and the large-format single images first introduced in 1990 in a renowned exhibition at the DIA Art Foundation in New York. The most recent works to be exhibited were made in 2006, the year of Bernd Becher’s death.

Fachwerkhauser (Timbered Houses), 1973
two gelatin silver prints mounted together, 15 1/2 x 12 inches

Since Bernd and Hilla Becher began photographing together in 1959, their work has focused on capturing a range of impressive industrial structures in Western Europe and America.  Water towers, blast furnaces, gas tanks, coal mine tipples, and grain elevators—each of their photographs isolates a large structure and describes it with the frontality and exactitude of an engineer’s diagram.  They would generally photograph on overcast days in the spring and fall, which provided them an even light with a vast tonal range.  This effect captured the structures in remarkable detail with intensified clarity, as if documenting the neglected relics of the industrial era.  This strict template furnishes the building blocks of what the Bechers came to call “typologies”—grids of pictures that reveal the basic forms of common functions while simultaneously highlighting the unique details of each particular specimen.

Water Tower, Crailsheim, Germany, 1980
gelatin silver print, 24 x 20 inches (sheet) [61.0 x 50.8 cm]

Bernd and Hilla Becher’s work is represented in many permanent collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Guggenheim, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among many others.  Their work was shown in Documentas 5 (1972), 6 (1977), 7 (1982), and 11 (2002).  Their teaching has influenced a generation of younger artists such as Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth.

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]]> 2745 Several Exceptionally Good Recently Acquired Pictures XVIII https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/several-exceptionally-good-recently-acquired-pictures-xviii Tue, 22 May 2012 20:35:32 +0000 http://fraenkelgallery.badfeather.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=3783 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Several Exceptionally Good Recently Acquired Pictures XVIII, from 6 July through 12 August 2006. This is the eighteenth installation of the exhibition known for its eclectic group of artists, some familiar and others unknown.  The exhibition provides an opportunity to study a provocative range of photographs that encompasses both […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Several Exceptionally Good Recently Acquired Pictures XVIII, from 6 July through 12 August 2006.

This is the eighteenth installation of the exhibition known for its eclectic group of artists, some familiar and others unknown.  The exhibition provides an opportunity to study a provocative range of photographs that encompasses both flea market finds and historic treasures.

Colorado, ca. 1973
gelatin-silver print, 6 x 6″

Included in this year’s selection is an ethereal Carleton Watkins mammoth-plate view of the Mendocino coastline circa 1863, as well as a group of Loewy and Puiseux heliogravures of the moon made at the end of the nineteenth century.  These pictures come from The Photographic Atlas of the Moon, considered the astronomers’ greatest achievement.  Helen Levitt, typically known for her black and white street scenes, is represented by her later, color pictures, recently published in the book Slide Show.  Four of Peter Hujar’s black and white portraits will be included as well as an early diptych from the German artists Bernd & Hilla Becher.  Another highlight is a group of Mechanical Forms, a pristine study of form and structure by Hiroshi Sugimoto. Six pictures from Diane Arbus’s radical Untitled series will be on view.  The portraits made during 1970 and 1971, at a residence for the mentally handicapped in New Jersey, represent a courageous body of work made during the last year of the artist’s life.

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]]> 3783 Industrial Landscapes https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/bernd-hilla-becher-industrial-landscapes Mon, 26 May 2003 07:40:04 +0000 http://fraenkelgallery.badfeather.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=3940 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Industrial Landscapes from July 3rd through August 23rd, 2003. Since 1959, Bernd and Hilla Becher have been photographing industrial structures in Europe and the United States.  The exhibition Industrial Landscapes introduces a new aspect to their photography.  Prior bodies of work have concentrated on isolated industrial objects: water towers, gas […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Industrial Landscapes from July 3rd through August 23rd, 2003.

Since 1959, Bernd and Hilla Becher have been photographing industrial structures in Europe and the United States.  The exhibition Industrial Landscapes introduces a new aspect to their photography.  Prior bodies of work have concentrated on isolated industrial objects: water towers, gas tanks, and blast furnaces, often organized into typologies that contrast objects of the same function. 

Black and white photograph of abandoned industrial buildings and smokestacks along train tracks
Rudersdorf, Brandenburg, D, 1994
gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches

The selection of images in Industrial Landscapes, made over the past forty years, presents huge industrial sites amidst their natural surroundings.  Photographed in industrial regions of Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, these images allow for a reading of social and historical aspects and enable the viewer to observe the industrial environment as part of a whole.

Following the sensibilities of early 20th century photographers Karl Blossfeldt and August Sander, the Bechers originated and mastered a genre of photography which falls somewhere between topological documentation and conceptual art.  In recent decades, the Bechers have profoundly influenced a new generation of artists including their students Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, and Thomas Struth.

The Bechers’ photographs can be found in the collections of numerous museums around the world.  A book, Industrial Landscapes, was recently published by MIT press.  Industrial Landscapes can be seen concurrently with the exhibition Several Exceptionally Good Recently Acquired Pictures XVI.  

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]]> 3940 Several Exceptionally Good Recently Acquired Pictures XIV https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/several-exceptionally-good-recently-acquired-pictures-xiv Mon, 25 Jun 2012 22:18:04 +0000 http://fraenkelgallery.badfeather.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=2480 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present its fourteenth exhibition of Several Exceptionally Good Recently Acquired Pictures. This unique show allows the gallery the opportunity to present a diverse collection of works, not simply recently acquired, but also the odd-ball, the eccentric, the highly-worthy images that refuse to fit into any other exhibition. This year’s highlights […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present its fourteenth exhibition of Several Exceptionally Good Recently Acquired Pictures. This unique show allows the gallery the opportunity to present a diverse collection of works, not simply recently acquired, but also the odd-ball, the eccentric, the highly-worthy images that refuse to fit into any other exhibition.

Black and white photograph of an apple in a bowl with another apple next to it
Bowls and Apples, Twin Lakes, Connecticut, 1916
silver and platinum print, 10-3/8 x 13 inches (image & sheet)

This year’s highlights include Paul Strand’s Bowls and Apples, Twin Lakes, Connecticut, a unique platinum investigation of Cubism from a high moment in early modernist photography; a series of Andy Warhol’s photo-booth studies of socialite and soon-to-be art dealer Holly Solomon from 1963-64; a large-scale study of the craters of the moon by French astronomers Loewy & Puiseux, circa 1900; an astonishing double-mammoth print study of the river boat “Nemo” near Ormond, Florida, circa 1895 by William Henry Jackson; and Carleton Watkins’ recently discovered four-part panorama of San Francisco made atop California Street in 1879.

Black and white photogram of intersecting rectangles and circles of light
Photogram, ca. 1922-1926
gelatin silver print, 7 x 5 inches (image & sheet)

Also to be exhibited are recent photographs by Nan Goldin, Richard Misrach, and Lee Friedlander’s remarkable close-up studies of telemarketers at work.

Finally, the exhibition would not be complete without its own selection of eclectic, ragtag, and semi-loony images by unknown photographers.

This exhibit runs concurrently with Nicholas Nixon: Lovers.

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